No matter how bad the Red Sox are playing it is always special when they are on Sunday Night Baseball. A national showcase always calls to mind the Monday Night version of my youth - when you had to really pay attention because you didn't get to see the teams or all-time great players too frequently.

To be honest, I don't think that people should necessarily go out of their way to watch this year's Sox club, but one of the first things that struck me about last night's game was the Boston line-up - with Mike Napoli back from his assorted injuries the 9 batters that John Farrell put up against Anibal Sanchez may have been the best that the squad has had to offer all season long.

Perhaps after watching Stephen Drew go 0 for 3 and get pinch hit for by Jonathan Herrera the better line-up may have featured (on paper) Will Middlebrooks at third and Xander Boegarts at short. It doesn't take any advanced metrics to realize that whatever affected Drew at the plate in the 2013 playoffs and World Series is still affecting him. Statistics can be a guide to live by, but after a large enough sample size the relevance of Drew's career norms have to go out the window and we (and that collective includes us, him, his family, Scott Boras, and the rest of Major League Baseball) have to believe that this guy has morphed from a .260 hitter into a .100 hitter and the Red Sox and Ben Cherington may have misappropriated $10M in an egregious fashion. One thing is for certain - Drew is making management look like fools and he's making the fans long for the halcyon days of Middlebrooks and his .196 batting average.

Drew aside, I was just glad that Jackie Bradley Jr. mixed a hit in with his three strikeouts because it keeps the rookie on an upward trend with his batting average. Another observation that is of interest to me - the Red Sox may be able to avoid fielding the worst offensive outfield in baseball by moving Brock Holt to leftfield. Holt got 4 more hits last night and while he may not slug too many homeruns (the starting outfield last night has 3 in total this season) he should boost the run production.

In the end, the Sox got a well-deserved victory courtesy of David Ortiz and his three-run homer off of old enemy Joba Chamberlin. Do not discount the presence of Napoli being back in the order when it came time to pitch to Ortiz. Brad Ausmus had already used left-hander Phil Coke to retire Big Papi earlier in the night and leaving Chamberlin in to face the Sox slugger seemed like trying to tempt fate so that he could get past Ortiz and face Napoli in the righty on righty match-up. In retrospect, it might have been more intelligent to intentionally walk Ortiz and hope that Napoli would hit into a double play.

I have to also admit that I was happy to see John Lackey get rewarded with a victory after another solid start. Lackey reduced his ERA to 3.18 and moved to 7 - 4 on the season with the win.

While we shouldn't get too used to seeing the Sox on national games much more this season should they continue their uneven play, it would be nice if John Farrell finally found a line-up that can score some runs.